From “Software für die Automatisierung—Transparenz über die Abläufe schaffen” (Software for automation—Creating process transparency), an article by Dirk Kozian in Elektronik für Automatisierung (Automation Electronics) 11, 17, 11, 1999, it is known that what are known as Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) can be used to automate production and manufacturing processes. These systems integrate the automation level or controls with the corporate-level ERP systems (ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning). Manufacturing Execution Systems are systems, which for example supply information for optimizing production processes. On the one hand the Manufacturing Execution Systems have to extend the general planning data of the ERP systems to include unit-specific and up-to-date detailed planning data and forward this correspondingly to the lower-level automation level and on the other hand they have the task of extracting production-relevant information from the automation level, processing this and forwarding it to the corporate level. MES systems thereby perform the role of vertical integration between corporate level and automation level. Typical individual tasks of MES systems are Enterprise Asset Management, Maintenance Management, Information Management, Scheduling, Dispatching and Trace & Track. These tasks are executed by MES components and MES applications respectively.
The heterogeneity of the MES applications in respect of software and data technology means that these are however very difficult to integrate into a shared system or project and the exchange of data between said applications cannot be easily achieved.
From “Massive Wiederverwendung: Konzepte, Techniken und Organisation” (Mass recycling: concepts, methods and organization), an article by Ulrich Lindner in OBJEKTspektrum 1/96, pages 10-17, it is known that software components can be integrated into a software system by means of what are known as adapters or by wrapping. The objective here is to increase the recyclability of software components.
In complex systems, such as MES systems, it is very difficult to trace and verify the exchange of information between the components involved.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,083,281 a method is described for tracing the activities of entities in software systems. However this method relates to the mode of operation of the entities and not the exchange of data between the entities. This method is intended to be of assistance to software developers in the development and test phases.
Also an event-log mechanism and an event display are known from the Microsoft Windows NT operating system.